Originally Posted by
AngerFork
I feel like you perhaps didn't quite understand what I was saying there, so I'll try this again
I'm not saying that all four races are the same, I'm saying that each race within itself does not have a ton of customization itself. Most of the Kyrian faces of any gender tend to look the same, with a couple small exceptions. Most of the Venthyr faces tend to look the same, such as the Curator & the Accuser. For a truly playable race, Blizz generally wants to have a few different facial options. Vulpera came with a few different face/snout options before they ever became playable, which was a hint that they would be at some point. Right now, the Shadowlands races don't have that same sort of variability in customizations.
Up to date textures & animations is to be expected with any new race. Blizz doesn't want a new race to clash graphically with the new zones, so of course they are going to have up to date textures, models, animations, etc. But for a number of customization options, I'm just not seeing it with most of the Shadowlands races. As I mentioned earlier, how different style-wise are the Accuser & the Curator realistically? Or Theotar and most generic Venthyr males? Compare that to the Kul Tirans which had a few different face types and several different setups of facial and non-facial hair. There just isn't enough there at this point to truly hint at playable races as much as these races just being flavorful NPCs which may have an occasional quest chain and/or toy to take their form.
Right now, they wouldn't. But given how light the changes are between LF Draenei and regular Draenei, one has to wonder if they would actually be customization options had the Allied Race system never come into place. Wildhammer had potential to be an Allied Race and seem to be about as similar aesthetically to Dwarves as LF Draenei are to Draenei, which is why I have to wonder if Blizz half wishes they could merge LF Draenei and regular Draenei into one race again if they could. They likely won't, the race has already been introduced and has different racials.
The reason I brought those up was more that many Allied Races seemed more like customizations at the time rather than full races...and now the core races have similar customizations themselves. Adding the new customizations as we've gotten would seem to point towards Blizz wanting to go back to full races and flesh out customization options rather than add in allied races again.